WESTFIELD – There was an overnight parking ban last night on portions of Elm, Court, Main, and Franklin streets for snow removal operations in the downtown area.
“We’ve had about four and a half feet of snow this year and it’s been condensed, refreezed and had salt eat away at it,” said Casey Berube, deputy superintendent of the Westfield Department of Public Works yesterday. “We’ve got signage on all of the snowbanks we’re targeting for removal.”
The DPW used a Bobcat to knock down some of these snowbanks and loaders to remove the snow. This snow may have gone to the city’s DPW yard in years past, but materials devoted to the city’s continuing Gaslight District project, as well as large piles of road salt and sand, are taking up most of the space in the yard now.
“There’s not a lot of real estate (in the yard). We’ve got a lot of cobblestone, sand, salt and we’ve already got snow back there,” said Berube. “We’re actually shipping it up to a city-owned parcel of property on Cabot Road, in an open field.”
Berube said that the overnight ban was decided upon as a way to keep from disturbing activity on Elm Street.
“We didn’t want to hurt business down there. They’ve already been impacted enough by the snowbanks,” he said.
Berube said at this morning that his crews cleaned up and deposited about 350 loads of snow to the Cabot Road property but added that there were still some areas his crews were unable to reach.
“We did pretty good. We got from around Butler Insurance and a portion of Main Street to around White Street,” he said. “We didn’t get parts of Franklin Street around Santiago’s.”
Berube said that snow removal would not be occurring this evening, as he knows college students will be out.
